Dayshift 31: Sun Room (Shift 2)

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[Scoobies + Bella's epic field day: readystartgo]

Taking his pick between sun and no sun wasn't that hard of a choice, really. Angel ended up in the Sun Room on a couch near the back, facing the entrance to keep an eye on anyone coming in. And by the window. The window and its resulting sunlight was important

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Not wanting to distress her further (and subsequently draw more attention from everyone), Angel gave up and let her remain attached to him. Which would've been less awkward if Willow was the only person there, but it seemed they'd gotten company.

Good timing had never blessed him. And he couldn't even tell her she was choking him to see if she'd let go because he'd obviously be lying.

Not that she didn't have reason to be distressed. He'd heard talk of the fictional thing, here and there. It was actually kind of unsettling to think about and hearing Anya confirm it didn't help, but-one thing at a time.

He flashed Bella an apologetic look. "I'm sorry about..." He sighed. Anya really wasn't going to let go, was she?

"Anya, I know you're...upset about-" Actually, was she more upset about being fictional or being a side character? Hard to tell. "-what you've learned, but I..." He trailed off a little helplessly, glancing at Willow again. She knew Anya better. Couldn't she help? Maybe?

Not that he was bad at comforting people-usually-but Anya seemed to require a special kind of comfort that he hadn't learned yet. Nothing he could think of to say seemed quite right.

[his_singer]

“It’s nice to meet you,” came Bella’s calm response, that same smile creeping onto her lips. She was staring to get her heart under control, at least. She didn’t want to come off as too big of a fanatic.

Anya’s sudden outburst had Bella grinning, her arms crossing over her chest as she moved to take a seat closer to willow than any of the others.

“I’ve seen that show,” the moment Bella said it she instantly regretted it - the last time she told someone they were a fictional character (or, rather, the first time) said character had a near mental breakdown. From the looks of things, it appeared that Anya was possible going down the same route … but she couldn’t be too sure. She might as well take things slow and simply, as so to not cause the least amount of drama amongst the Scoobies. She had a feeling she was going to be questioned about the entire thing, so she had to try and rethink about everything she knew. It had been a while since she had seen the episodes, anyway.

“Um,” Bella chewed on her bottom lip as she tried to figure out what to say. Her mind was coming up with blanks, sadly. “But you were a big part of things, Anya?”

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"Really? How big?" Anya demanded, giving this Bella girl a stern look. "Was it like 'The Buffy and Anya Show,' or was it all about the Slayer and her two codependent little lap dogs, the witch and the butt-monkey?" she asked, not caring that Willow was standing right there.

"Or was it all about Buffy and her boytoys?" she asked, ignoring the fact that not only was Angel right there, but she still had her arms around his neck. "Even though the first one dumped her and ran away to Los Angeles without so much as a goodbye, smashing her poor young heart into a million jagged pieces, and the second one dumped her and ran away to, like, Central Kajakistan also without saying goodbye, and then the third one was weird, and destructive, and then ran off to get a soul but just wound up sitting in a basement whining for like half a year?"

She thought about what she's just said. "Oh," she said reluctantly, "I guess that would make a good TV show..."

"B-but Xander killed himself, right?" the vengeance demon demanded, getting back on track. She pointed a stern finger at Bella. "He threw himself on the blade of his own sword after my horrible, traumatizing death, right?"

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The first time Anya burst out with the fictional thing, Willow hadn't really paid it much attention. Anya wasn't exactly the most reliable person on earth, and what she was saying made little sense, anyway.

But just as she opened her mouth to try finding out what was really wrong, Bella piped up with her comment.

Willow looked sideways at her. Her brain, usually very fast, was slow in comprehending the words. "What?..."

And then Anya burst out with her long speech right while Willow was trying to figure out exactly what was going on, and all in all, the witch's head was reeling. When the silence began lengthening after Anya finished speaking, she finally said the first thing that came into her mind.

"Xander's not a butt-monkey."

She paused, then glanced at Angel, completely at a loss for anything to say or think. Did he know anything about this?...

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Willow at least still had the capacity for speech. Angel just stared at Bella, forgetting for the first time that he had someone wrapped around his neck. It was a good ten seconds before he shook himself out of it.

He firmly detached himself from Anya's grip and stood up, scratching the back of his head as he met Willow's equally baffled gaze. He'd heard about the phenomenon, but he hadn't actually expected someone to have-especially not standing right here. And certainly not about them. Had Bella actually-?

"This is-I'm not..." He trailed off and turned to frown at Anya, something she'd said finally catching up to him. "I didn't whine. And I was never in a basement."

[his_singer]

The sudden questions caused Bella to frown as she tried to think up answers to all of them. How to explain. “Um …you were practically throughout the entire show? With Giles and … others …”

What had she gotten herself into?

“And it’s not all about Buffy and her … boytoys. There’s a lot of other things going on …” a pause, and she turned to Angel with a sorry smile, “You have your own show too. After you went to L.A, a lot of things started to happen with you, too, so there were two shows, and each was about … well, a lot of things, really… from death, to taking over law firms, to - yes, getting souls back …” yet another pause, and Bella lowered her head, looking up at angel apologetically through her lashes. “And she doesn’t mean you sitting in a basement, Angel. She’s talking about … Spike.”

“But!” she quickly caught herself, turning back to Anya with a frown. “Xander didn’t kill himself when he found out you died. He -“ wait a second. Bella sighed, holding up her hands in a ‘time out’ gesture. “What was the last thing all of you remember? I might be able to help you all if you just … don’t … go crazy with the questions.”

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Anya pouted when Angel finally disentangled himself from her grip, but took the opportunity to steal his chair.

"Well, I'd just killed..." Anya rolled her eyes dismissively. "Maybe a dozen frat boys. Or so. Not a big deal, right? And Buffy got all moral crusader on me and ran me through with a broadsword."

[light_wicca]

Even after meeting Alec Trevelyan in person and someone who might actually be Superman on the bulletin board, the idea that Willow herself was fictional as well had never even crossed her mind. It made... a twisted kind of sense, when she thought about it. But still... someone... made her up?

What on earth was this place?

Many different thoughts were swirling around her head as Bella tried to help them out. Bella knew Giles's name? Xander killed himself?... This felt extremely weird, and it still didn't quite feel real. Someone was standing in front of her who knew everything about her? About her friends? From a TV show?

Although that would explain why Anya seemed to remember things Willow didn't, if their entire lives were planned out in someone's head.

"I was going to England," she spoke up after Anya. As much as none of this made any sense, they weren't going to get anywhere if everyone loaded each other with questions. Someone needed to take charge, and Bella seemed to be the one willing to do that. "Right after..." She trailed off, lowering her gaze.

She was saved from having to mention the going-evil experience, though, by realizing exactly what Anya had just said. "Wait. Frat boys? You killed...?"

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Wait. She was talking about who again?

He must've just heard incorrectly. That was probably it. This was all completely bewildering as it was, anyway, what with learning that people had access into his private life, and...

And I have my own show? That was ridicu-actually, no, come to think of it, that was actually kind of...Never mind. He was getting off track. He needed to sit down, but Anya had usurped his couch the instant he'd left it.

Angel was about to simply let Willow talk first, not wanting to overwhelm Bella who looked a little uncertain herself, but then Anya spoke and for the first time, what she said made things less confusing. By a bit, at least, since her earlier complaint about Buffy "going homicidal" suddenly made a whole lot more sense now.

"You've been killing people?"

He'd hardly met Anya back in Sunnydale, but she seemed to be one of Buffy's friends from what he'd heard and he'd always thought she'd reformed. Besides, nothing she'd done while here had proven otherwise, not really.

Then again, maybe he'd just been too distracted with finding out within the past twenty-four hours that Buffy had slept with Spike, Willow had nearly destroyed the world while Xander had apparently saved it, and why was he always so behind on the important things? Nobody ever kept him up to date.

[his_singer]

“You didn’t die then,” Bella told Anya simply, a sigh escaping her lips. “You came back to life … and gave up your powers after Xander was done pleading to Buffy to not hurt you. But … there was … a price to give up your powers …” her glance lowered to the ground - perhaps she could change the subject quickly.

Thankfully, Willow spoke up at that moment, and Bella turned her attention towards her instead. “It’s okay, you don’t need to continue. And she didn’t kill the frat boys … well, she did, but that was because she turned back into a vengeance demon and was asked to do that. Everything was okay afterwards, though. The entire thing was taken back, so in the end they were okay.”

This was going to get rough. Sighing, Bella ran a hand through her long hair, trying to think. “So you’re from the last season, okay … that makes things a bit easier to remember … at least it was semi recent …” she was talking to herself at this point, her eyes lowered to the floor as she tried to think. Dammit, she really wished she could have seen the episodes again!

Turning towards Angel, she tilted her head to the side and frowned. “What about you? Or … do you not remember or anything?”

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"Wait, so I didn't die? But you said Xander didn't kill himself when he found out that I did die. Which is it?" Anya demanded, ignoring the fact that Bella was talking to the other two Scoobies now.

"And Xander didn't commit suicide at all? Not even a little? Was he at least maimed? Or did he lose all his money and spend the rest of his life in a gutter somewhere being a drunken loser!" she said, confident that that had to be the case.

She leaned across the arm of her chair towards Bella. "Did I win the lottery at any point during this 'TV show'?"

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"Wait. Seasons?" And Anya died? And she was fictional but from a later point in the... TV show... than Willow?

Finding out that millions of people had viewed your entire life since, apparently, meeting Buffy, was a little unsettling. Not to mention that Anya's incessant inquiries after Xander's health weren't helping in the least.

And Bella knew. She'd seen everything Willow had gone through. She knew about Warren.

"Okay, let's say that we are fictional," she cut in right after Anya, her voice staying remarkably steady. "Then... how are we here? Why are we here? With a bunch of other fictional characters?" Did Landel's have the power to do that? Was Landel's a fictional world, created by an author who wanted to see what happened when several other worlds were combined together? Was all of this, right now, a book somewhere in the 'real' world?

Or was Landel's the 'real' world?

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"I, um, remember-I was with Cordelia and...Wesley?" Did Bella know who they were? Well, of course she did, but. "We'd-there was a prophecy."

Although truth be told, Angel wasn't sure if he wanted to know what was in store for him. It probably wasn't anything good.

But Willow raised a good question. Hadn't someone said something about Harry Potter? He was fairly certain Harry Potter was part of a children's book, wasn't he? Who else here was fictional? Or was everyone fictional to at least someone else?

"Maybe it's a complex doppelganger effect. Of some sort." He glanced at Willow. "I mean, we both know that two versions of the same person can exist at once."

[his_singer]

Shit, she had to reply to Anya first. “Um, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant when you were stabbed …” she couldn’t straight out tell Anya that she died in the last episode. She didn’t really WANT to tell someone that they had died, no matter who it was. “He was scared at first, but then you pulled the sword out, if I remember correctly …”

Things were going too fast. Bella had to take in a deep breath before she could answer Anya’s second question, trying to get it all out at once. “No, Xander never committed suicide. You can’t really kill yourself a little anyway. And … uh, I don’t … think you won the lottery? So I’m just going to go with no on that question.”

Finally Willow spoke, causing the teenager to let out a relieved sigh. “That’s the thing …” she whispered, her eyes falling to the ground as she spoke, “No one knows … even I might be fictional, but the person I thought might knew didn’t say … anything, so …” it was a weird thought, really, to think that hundreds, if not thousands of people knew everything about your life, right down to the day you had been born. Bella chewed on her lip as she thought - hopefully, if anything, she was a side character from … whatever she was from. “No one knows why we’re here … at least, from what I can tell. We just … are. And no one really even knows where this IS, it seems. There are some rumors that it’s at least in the US, but … no one really knows.”

Finally turning her attention to Angel, Bella nodded her head. Prophecy … hm. There had been too many in that show! She could hardly remember. She just hoped that it wasn’t the child one … how would he react to the knowledge that he had a son, only to then give him up so he could have a better life? Maybe she could leave out that bit of information as well. “Complex doppelgänger? Are you saying that we’re the fake ones? … or maybe something was put in our place?” That was an odd thought. Frowning, Bella shook her head and sighed. “That wouldn’t make sense, though. Someone from my home … she can see things in the future too, and she would have seen this happening beforehand …”

She couldn't imagine how Alice was taking things.

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"So," Anya said loudly, trying to get Bella's attention back on her. "Back to the TV show now. Ya know, the millions of people avidly following every aspect of my life. They didn't show... I mean," the vengeance demon laughed awkwardly, trying to cover up her embarrassment.

"There was a... tiny lapse in judgement in The Magic Box... with. Um. Spike." She mumbled his name quickly, hardly wanting to admit what had happened. "And enough real people were watching that on their TV screens without 'audience' people watching it too. They... they didn't show that, right?"

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Willow shivered slightly at Angel's suggestion. The idea that she wasn't only fictional, but not the real Willow?... It was possible, but... extremely scary, and not really something she wanted to think about.

"If the entire show is pre-planned, then... we probably are. I mean, the real versions of ourselves are... finishing it out, I guess? And we're copies pulled into this place." She frowned. "Then everyone here's fictional. That..." in any other situation, that would have been the most amazing thing to ever happen to Willow. She smiled awkwardly. "That kind of makes escaping from here sort of pointless, doesn't it? Or do we have to escape to continue the fiction?"

Gah, this was making her head hurt.